Travel Team

by Mike Lupica

  As soon as he did, the kid got bug eyes, and you could see he couldn’t wait to give the ball up to Bud Sheedy. Who popped out, away from his screen, the way he was supposed to, even took a couple of steps toward the ball, not away from it, the way they were taught all the way back in Biddy Basketball.

  Bud just didn’t move toward the ball as quickly as a streak of light named Danny Walker.

  Who had been playing possum behind the double screen, arms at his side, like Bud Sheedy was somebody else’s responsibility now.

  The pass was in the air before the point guard, or Bud Sheedy, saw Danny making his move, cutting between them and grabbing the ball out of the air as if the pass had been intended for him all along.

  He caught the ball and had the presence of mind to give one fast look at the clock over the basket at the other end—the Warriors’ basket—as he did.

  Four seconds left.

  Will Stoddard had always said something about Danny that people used to say about his dad:

  He was faster with the ball than everybody else was without it.

  Will would tell him afterward that Bud Sheedy, no slouch himself when it came to running the court, was coming so hard he was sure he was going to catch Danny from behind.

  “I knew nobody was going to catch Coach Walker,” Bren said.

  Everybody agreed on this: There was one second showing on the clock when Danny released his layup maybe one foot further away from the basket than he would have preferred.

  He didn’t know anything about where Bud Sheedy was, or how close he came to catching him, or the clock behind the basket. He was going by the clock inside his head, keeping his eyes on the prize:

  That little square right above the basket.

  He pushed off on his left leg, going up hard but laying the ball up there soft. He saw the ball hit the square as if there were a bull’s-eye painted on it. The last thing he saw before he went flying toward the stage was the ball go through the net, right before the horn sounded.

  He was sitting on the floor with his back against the stage when the Warriors came running for him.

  Warriors 34, Kirkland 32.

  Final.

  28

  WHEN DANNY MANAGED TO BREAK LOOSE FROM THE WARRIORS, HE SAW BUD Sheedy and the rest of the Kirkland Comets still on the court, lined up and waiting to shake hands.

  Danny said to his teammates, “Hey, we had enough practice losing. Now we gotta act like we know how to win.”

  Still coaching, to the end.

  He was last in line. Bud Sheedy was last in their line. When it was just the two of them, Bud said to Danny, “We heard something about you coaching, but nobody really believed it.”

  “We sort of did it together,” Danny said, and meant it. “Ty probably did more coaching today than I did.”

  “Nah, you did it to us and we know you did,” Bud said. “You knew exactly what you were doing on defense with that last play.” Bud smiled and shook his head. “That was, like, sick, dude.”

  The word always made Danny smile.

  Somehow it had worked out that sick was right up there with the highest possible praise one guy could give another.

  “Thanks,” Danny said.

  Some of the Warriors were sitting on the folding chairs that served as their bench, some were on the floor, and all of them were eating the Krispy Kremes that Tess had brought in the green-and-white boxes that made your mouth water just thinking about what was inside. Tess waved at him, telling him to come over and eat.

  But Danny was looking for Ty, who he thought was the real hero of the day.

  He knew the Vikings had a game here in about an hour, against Hanesboro, and had just assumed that Ty would hang around for that. Only Danny didn’t see him anywhere in the gym, and when he checked the back hallway where they’d had their team meeting at halftime, he wasn’t out there, either. Or in the boys’ locker room, where the Kirkland kids were getting into their coats. Danny asked Bud Sheedy if he’d seen Ty once the game ended. Bud said, “His dad showed up to watch the last few minutes. Stood over there in the corner by himself. Then as soon as you made your shot, I saw him come get Ty and take him by the arm.” Bud hooked a thumb in the general direction of the front door of St. Pat’s. “They went thataway.”

  Danny went back through the gym, made a motion to Tess like, one sec, pushed through the double doors that took him into the foyer, where all the glass doors were like a giant window facing out toward the front steps, and the parking lot.

  Danny ducked over by the machine that dispensed bottled water, so they wouldn’t see him.

  They meaning Ty and Mr. Ross.

  The two of them were on the top step in the cold, Mr. Ross doing all the talking. You could see his breath in the air between him and Ty, coming out of him in bursts, like machine-gun fire.

  His face looked like the kind of clenched fist you made when you were looking to throw a punch, not tap somebody five.

  Danny could see that as clear as day. He also noticed for the first time—he’d been too wrapped up in the game before to look past the game—that Ty didn’t have his cast on his wrist anymore, just had it wrapped in an Ace bandage the color of his skin.

  Good hand and bad hand, both at his sides, Ty stood there helpless while his father talked to him. Talked at him. Danny couldn’t hear what he was saying through the thick doors, but could feel Mr. Ross’s voice even in here, the way you could sometimes feel the beat of loud rap music from the car next to you.

  Occasionally Mr. Ross would poke Ty in the chest.

  Finally Ty couldn’t take any more of what Mr. Ross was dishing out and started to cry.

  Danny wanted to look away, this was the last thing he wanted to see. But he couldn’t.

  For a moment, Mr. Ross didn’t say anything. Danny could just see his chest rising and falling, as if he had tired himself out.

  It was then that Danny saw Mrs. Ross standing at the bottom of the steps. Maybe she said something to them, because Ty turned and saw her, too.

  When he tried to leave, took just one step in his mom’s direction, Mr. Ross grabbed his arm, turned him back around.

  Then a pretty amazing thing happened:

  Ty Ross shook him off, like his dad was just another defender who couldn’t guard him, and walked down the steps to where his mom was waiting for him.

  She touched him on the shoulder, still glaring up at her husband, and then she turned away and walked with Ty across the lot to where her red station wagon was parked.

  The beginning of the end, that’s the way Danny would think of the scene later.

  Tess, who loved to play with words, said it was actually the end of the beginning.

  Her description, they both decided, was more accurate.

  29

  THEY WON AGAIN THE NEXT DAY AGAINST SEEKONK, THE TEAM THEY’D BEATEN for their first win, in a game that now seemed to have been played when they were all in the fifth grade.

  They were ahead by so much at halftime that Danny went with both O’Brien twins—at the same time, a first—for the entire second half, even though both of them were complaining by the middle of the fourth quarter that they were more tired than they usually got after sleepovers.

  Three wins now for the Warriors, who’d started out thinking they weren’t going to beat anybody.

  One game to go, a rematch with Hanesboro, before the play-offs.

  Maybe, Danny had started to think, they had finally turned into what they were supposed to be, what Richie Walker had talked about the very first time they were all together, the team nobody wanted to play.

  Then Matt Fitzgerald’s bad cold somehow turned into full-blown pneumonia and he ended up in the hospital.

  Will called with the news, saying he didn’t want Danny to read all about it in an IM box.

  “Who do we call about ordering up some size?” Will said.

  Danny told him he’d been asking himself that question his whole life.

  Danny had three
IM boxes going on his screen as he talked to Will: Will’s, Tess’s, Colby’s.

  “I would like to make one other observation,” Will said.

  “What?”

  “Turns out it’s a small world after all,” Will said.

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” Danny said.

  “Other people say I need help,” Will said, and then said he was getting off, if any other brilliant thoughts popped into his head, he’d send them along by e-mail. But not before adding, “Don’t worry, you’ll think of something.”

  Danny took down Will’s box and Colby’s.

  Just him and Tess now.

  Just the way he liked it.

  CROSSOVER2: Matt’s got pneumonia and I’m the one who feels sick.

  Her response didn’t take long.

  What did they used to say in the Superman cartoons? Tess Hewitt was faster than a speeding bullet.

  CONTESSA44: You’ll come up with a plan.

  CROSSOVER2: You sound like Will.

  CONTESSA44: That is a cruel and heartless thing to say.

  He looked out the window and saw a wet snow starting to fall, the worst kind; if he didn’t shovel it right away around the basket, it would be slippier than a hockey rink out there before he knew it.

  CROSSOVER2: I need a secret weapon. When was the last time you played center?

  CONTESSA44: We’re not that desperate yet.

  CROSSOVER2: Getting there.

  CONTESSA44: You don’t need me.

  Sometimes you had to let your guard down, put yourself out there, not try to be so much of a guy.

  Which meant telling somebody the truth.

  CROSSOVER2: I always need you.

  CONTESSA44: I know. And back at you, by the way.

  Before he could think of something clever that would lighten up the mood, not let things stay too serious, she was back at him.

  CONTESSA44: YOU’RE our secret weapon. ’Nite.

  He left the computer on while he washed his face and brushed his teeth, then went down to say good night to his mom, who had propped up a bunch of pillows and had a blanket over her and was reading in her favorite spot in front of the fire.

  When he came back up to his room, he heard the old doodlely-doo from the computer.

  Incoming. Tess?

  He walked over and stared at the message on the screen.

  What?

  He sat down in his swivel chair, closed his eyes, opened them, stared at the screen again, just to make sure it wasn’t some kind of weird figment of his imagination.

  It wasn’t.

  Then Danny Walker, knowing his mom would think he was a crazy person if she walked in on him, sat there and laughed his head off.

  Will Stoddard was insane.

  But he sure wasn’t alone.

  The Warriors beat Hanesboro the next morning, even without Matt Fitzgerald, mostly because Colby Danes had the game of her life, scoring twenty points and, according to ace statistician Tess Hewitt, grabbing fourteen rebounds.

  Tess also pointed out after the game that Danny’d had twelve assists.

  “You don’t know how to keep assists,” he said.

  “I’m going to forget I heard that,” she said. “First you act like I can’t keep track of time-outs, something my cat could do. Now this ugly charge.”

  “You really know what an assist is?”

  “When it all gets too complicated for me,” she said, “I find a big hunky boy and ask him to explain whether that was a pass I just saw, or some kind of unidentified flying object.”

  Danny said, “I should drop this now, right?”

  “I would.”

  Danny and Tess stayed at St. Pat’s doing homework after the Hanesboro game, eating the lunches their moms had packed for them. When they were done with lunch they walked back to the gym to watch the Vikings play Piping Rock in the game that would determine which one of them finished first in the league.

  He also wanted to see the new kid on the Vikings Ty had told him about. David Rodriguez, his name was, a five-eight kid from the Bronx who had been born in San Juan and whose family had moved to Middletown three days before. According to Ty, the dad was a policeman and had gotten tired of working for the New York police, and had up and taken a job on the small Middletown force.

  “I only watched him at the end of one practice, when I went over to try shooting around a little bit,” Ty had said. “I think the Knicks could use this guy.”

  David Rodriguez was even taller than Matt Fitzgerald and, without Ty in the lineup, the fastest kid on the Vikings as soon as he took his warm-ups off. Mr. Ross didn’t put him into the game until the start of the second quarter, but Danny only had to watch him for two minutes to know he was the best center in town now, better than Jack Harty, better than Matt.

  Great, Danny thought, just what the Vikings needed:

  More size.

  They hadn’t just added a player, they had added a New York City player.

  “Why couldn’t he go to St. Pat’s?” Danny said. “Then I could have recruited him.”

  “He is pretty good,” Tess said.

  “Only if you like a tall guy who plays like a little guy,” Danny said. “I hear they call him Da-Rod. As in A-Rod.”

  “Who’s A-Rod?” Tess said.

  “Only the best baseball player in the world.”

  “One sport at a time, pal,” Tess said, “one sport at a time.”

  They were sitting at the very top of the bleachers the janitors rolled out when there was enough of a crowd; the old-fashioned wood bleachers stretched from foul line to foul line. And as good as the game between the Vikings and Piping Rock turned out to be, Danny found himself watching Mr. Ross as much as he did the players. Figuring that if he studied him he could finally come up with an answer about why twelve-year-old travel basketball—winning at twelve-year-old travel basketball—seemed to mean so much to him.

  And the more Danny watched him, and watched the dad coaching Piping Rock, the more he kept coming back to the same question:

  Why were they even doing this?

  It wasn’t that either one of them was a screamer once the game had started; neither one of them was shouting at the players very much, or the refs. Danny didn’t see either one of them really lose his temper one single time, even though they made plenty of faces every time somebody on the court did something wrong.

  It was just that neither one of them seemed to be having any fun.

  They looked like they were working.

  Without ever getting near each other, or really looking at each other, Danny still got the idea that they were competing against each other. It was like watching a college game on ESPN sometimes, at least until he couldn’t take it anymore and had to turn the sound off. Even if it was a game he really, really wanted to see. Because the more he listened to the announcers, the more he started to get the idea that it was Coach Kryzyzewski of Duke competing against Coach Williams of North Carolina instead of the Blue Devils going against the Tar Heels.

  He always came back to what his dad constantly drummed into his head:

  It was a players’ game.

  It just didn’t come across that way on television, at least not often enough.

  It sure wasn’t that way here.

  The two dads were coaching so fiercely, they were missing a great game.

  And it was great, back and forth the whole second half, guys on both teams making plays, some of the plays so good Danny couldn’t believe his eyes sometimes. He couldn’t remember a single time in the game when either team was ahead by more than four points. The game was so great Danny understood now what Ty had been going through all season, sitting there watching while everybody else got to play.

  Even though Danny had been dragging at the end of the Hanesboro game, he wanted to get back out there all over again, mix it up with these guys.

  A game like this always made you want to get your sneaks back on.

  The Vikings should have been h
aving a ball playing in a game this good, the level of play this high, the top seed in the tournament riding on it. But they weren’t. Even when one of them, Jack Harty or Da-Rod or Daryll Mullins or the hated Moron Moran, would do something nice and get their team a basket, Mr. Ross would be up almost before the ball was through the net, like he’d been shot up out of a James Bond-type ejector seat, telling them where to go on defense, what to do next.

  They all seemed like they were afraid to enjoy doing something right, because in the very next moment they might be doing something wrong.

  The Vikings gave Piping Rock a run, all the way to when Jack Harty’s shot fell off the rim at the end of overtime and Piping Rock won, 49–48.

  The Vikings, without Ty, without Andy Mayne still, had lost, but Danny knew they were the better team, especially with Da-Rod in the house now.

  They just didn’t seem to be having much fun.

  How did Will put it?

  The Vikings were a no-mirth zone.

  “I don’t want to be with them anymore,” he said to Tess when the game was over. “The Vikings, I mean.”

  “I can see why,” she said.

  It had taken almost the entire season, but he finally knew he was with the right team, after all.

  The setup for the first round of the tournament was pretty basic, the number-one seed playing number eight, number two playing number seven, and so on. The teams with the better records got to play home games. Seekonk, for example, which had finished in eighth place, had to go to Piping Rock. The Vikings, at number two, also got a home game, at St. Pat’s, but home court didn’t matter very much to them, because it was going to be Middletown versus Middletown. They were playing the number-seven Warriors, one o’clock, the following Saturday afternoon.

  The Warriors’ last practice before the play-offs, the Warriors minus Matt Fitzgerald, would be on Tuesday night. Their last full practice, anyway. Danny still planned to get the key guys together at his house the next night.

  That included Colby Danes, who was officially one of the guys now, even if Will Stoddard certainly didn’t think of her quite that way.